A site of special-interest to followers of the Church of God [Anderson, Indiana Convention],--EVERYONE welcome--to chat about healing and uniting our diverse global family. God be with you and yours as we share His Healing.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Moral Economics

Well…Republicans won this
round. Soon we will have a new President to adulate or hate. What Republicans do
with this opportunity God alone can guess. Will Democrats
use this as an opportunity to serve the common good or will they play the game
of Party Politics? Duh… Who knows; I don’t.

What I do see is that we have
a whole new set of demographics. People are demanding that we return to days of
more nostalgic greatness. But, what does that mean? I‘m not quite sure who “we think
we are or when that was. ” I’m less sure of who we want to be, and even less
sure that “we” are even aware there is a world of people out there wanting a
piece of “our greatness.” I doubt “we” even care!

I’m satisfied “they” come from
less than what most of us take for granted. I’m also convinced they feel they
deserve as much as we do to feel equally-well provided for and to live
comfortably and safely. After all; who doesn’t? While many continue asking
questions … demanding changes … I, fwiw,
agree!

So let me ask an economic question
that calls for some moral reasoning (people are pretty well decided on what
they agree or disagree about the great moral issues): Will you agree that a CEO be paid as much as the market will bear?

Some of you will quickly say “Yes,
I believe in free enterprise.” I ask, “for whom?” Some [like me] hesitate answering
before first considering contextual factors. Others could say, “No! That is the
way of Pharoah vs The Exodus!”

This question actually came up
in ‘06 when median family income was up 18%. Simultaneously,
income was up 200% for the top 1% of the wealthiest families (War on the
Middleclass/Dobbs/16/2006). It actually climbed to 400% in some
cases.

Lou Dobbs, that staunchly
Republican standby, reported CEOs at AT&T, BellSouth, Hewlett-Packard, Home
Depot, Lucent, Merck, Pfizer, Safeway, Time Warner, Verizon & Walmart) were
paid an aggregate of $865 million in compensation over the previous five years,
during which time shareholders lost $640 billion.

That widely researched
statistic only verified the upward economic surge of the last forty-or-so years,
during which time the gap between the haves and have not's widened even
further, being funneled upward by a politically established, economically-motivated
ripping of the American social fabric.

Becoming richer at the expense of the more
vulnerable were the wealthy. The
trend remains today, although sounding much like the Biblical stories of Lazrus and Dives, or
the farmer that tore down his barns to build bigger ones. Yes, the masses still rant,
rave, review, and revolutionize, doing it in forms both conversational and sometimes
violent.

All the while, we brand demcratic
dissenters as socially elite, liberal left, and mindless media. We call them
disingenuous! They should work for a living like we do. We pronounce them liberal,
left-wing idiots; some are religious idealists,but all are products of what we think is an urban socialist society akin to Communism and greatly inferior
to our rural-suburban politic. We really want them to know they cannot live at the
expense of our supporting them governmentally, as if providing a social safety
net is something deeply immoral.

Ibelieve what we really need is a radical
return to the teachings of Jesus. For this, you can call me “an idealist,” a
religious fundamentalist (code word for domestic terrorist), even a socialist,
left-field liberal or anything but white, evangelical, and male.

It is true, I am a white male. I am also strongly evangelical. And yes, I believe we need to return to the core
teachings of Jesus rather than teaching the false gospel some teach, as Scripture warns us.
We need to again hear the words of The inclusive Christ, as opposed to exclusive; That One who taught us to love our enemies
and treat others as we want to be treated.
His principles are laid out in the Sermon on the Mount and in the four gospels,
but they are affirmed and taught throughout the Scriptures.

The fact is, Jesus went to the
cross rather than compromise his God-given mission. Among his final words on
earth were those uttered to a dying thief as Jesus put off his own dying long
enough to include one more unregenerate thief, comforting him with his own
word, “This day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

That was the inclusive
attitude of the Jesus some of us call “Lord!” There is room at the cross for
all of humanity. The way of the cross really does lead homeward. As such, it forms
the heart and soul of the Christian gospel that Paul and others only helped
interpret. Paul essentially instructed “you follow me as I follow Christ.”

Even the Old Testament Prophet
looked forward [with gospel insight] trying to help his people honor God in a
God-pleasing way (cf Isaiah 58, especially NCV). Their usual festivals and pilgrimages
of ritualistic fasting, flagellating themselves et al, simply fell too far
short of personally knowing and experiencing God. They needed to hear God say,

“I will tell you the
kind of special day I want: Free the people you

have put in prison unfairly and undo their
chains. Free those to

whom
you are unfair and stop their hard labor. Share your food

with
the hungry and bring poor, homeless people into yourown

homes.
When you see someone who has no clothes, give him yours,

and
don’t refuse to help your own relatives. Then your light will

shine
like the dawn and your wounds will quickly heal. Your God

will
walk before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from

behind.
Then you will call out, and the Lord will answer. You will

cry
out, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’”

Do I mistranslate this when I suggest
that if one is pro-life; eg, one will not stop with simply protecting the
pre-born fetus but hold all of life, sacred, and perhaps the end of life
as well—a sacred and respected value--regardless of color, creed, culture, or …

The business man will begin treating
employees as s/he wants to be treated and much more than a bottom-line
commodity good only for trade for larger profit.

It could imply a game- change,
even for House Leader Paul Ryan et company. If we act consistently with what we
claim we believe, it will dramatically change our game plan and that will include
dramatically improving the lives of multitudes of vulnerable people--including
emigrants. It will change our
relationships by envisioning for every
other individual “an equal-opportunity to win”rather than the predatory
currency of “I win you lose” hard-core capitalism (more gently called free
market economy).

It means nationally we will
tone down our nationalistic patriotism and recognize God’s Global Community as
a human family where ALL are in the
ballgame-of-life TOGETHER, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, gender, ad
infinitum.

In as much as you did not do
it unto the least of these, Jesus concluded, you did not do it unto me. “How
long will we ignorethe one person
in history who willingly gave himself that ‘we’ might ALL move forward?”

Could it be that our biggest
problem is neither our political differences or our economic status but (horror
of horrors) our own personal moral issue? Pondering this question from Warner’s
World,